Regardless of what server side development language you use, javascript in the web development world is a extremely powerful and flexible language to take advantage of. I’ve spoiled myself by using jQuery, but understanding these principles will apply to any javascript framework or application.

So, let’s say I don’t want this hardcoded, ie. I receive the value from a control, etc… with the Silverlight aspx control I can access the inputParameter property. For example, with a asp:Silverlight control id of ‘Xaml1’:

This obviously offers up a ton of added capability, being able to manipulate the html dom from within managed code!

Finally, to cap this all off, if I want to build a search page, but keep the input box for search parameters within the html vs. inside the silverlight UI (or both), I can access the html from within Silverlight and retrieve values:

Well, I’ve decided it’s time to learn to use Silverlight. I’m installing the Silverlight 2.0 and latest Blend software (along with Zoom) to run it.

This will be my first step into XAML/WPF. If anyone has some good reading recommendations or tutorials worth going through, email me or post me some links here.

UPDATE: wow. ok, I started in on some tutorials. Silverlight/Blend/VS 2008 actually make a good combination. I still don’t like that I can’t use Blend ‘inside’ VS 2008 – or that VS doesn’t just include this functionality (it’s silly to be popping back and forth between the two). (Blend isn’t really needed, but it just makes it easier at times).

So, Silverlight isn’t really that difficult at all 🙂 I’m having fun with it. I did create a DeepZoom test, I have a map from a flight combat sim game and I wanted to try out the Deep Zoom composer – it basically takes an image and adds zooming scrolling capability to it. Here is an example:

Secondly, I create a sample after listening to this 15 minute video of a Silverlight/WCF/LINQ to SQL control that queries one of my database tables. Not too shabby – it helps that they have included the Datagrid in Silverlight 2.0.

The download of Silverlight is extremely small – I’m impressed they can stuff that much ‘.net framework’ into such a small download…. 🙂

UPDATE 2: Some very important tips to using LINQ to SQL with Silverlight (ie mostly for updates – since it’s disconnected with the WCF/WebServices)

1. unless you roll your own, you will have to add a timestamp column to your database tables… (yikes)

2. make sure you set that timestamp field to “Update Check” = “Always”